I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't give you everything you wanted. I wasn't everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted.

I'll never be ready. Yet at the same time, you always want to reach the end. You can't fly to a destination and linger in the air. I want to reach the end of this thing, and I feel terrible about it.

The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I'm in the hospital and I'm healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands on her lap.

Because feeling love does make you feel superior. Until you find out you aren't loved back.

That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.

I like the way men cry. They're efficient.

I don't ask what Alex sees in him because I'm afraid my disapproval will make her latch on to him even more. That's how it works. I'll have to pretend he doesn't bother me and that I don't want to drown him in the bay.